Simply Worth It
by Fala-Li
Summary: KakaSaku, slight SaiSaku if you squint. Sakura relays something that's troubling her to a pensive Kakashi who hears more than is said - Sai and Kakashi combine efforts to find a solution to their female teammate's worries. Beware of the fluff.


AN: This is a one-shot. It won't be continued, although I may be posting some more Kaka/Saku (and possibly Sai/Saku, if the mood strikes me) one-shots in the future. It's not spectacular, just something simple (and I thought cute) that came to my crazy brain during the long 8.5 hour work day.

You'll have to forgive any spelling/sentence errors - it's been a long day, and I can never find my own typos in my own writings. Hope you enjoy it!

~~~~~*~*~*~*

As always, it isn't difficult to find him. Managing to appear lazy even while sitting on a tree branch, Kakashi for once was absent of his bright orange book, seeming to have opted instead to enjoy the surrounding forest.

On an ordinary day, she would have merely sat by him without a word, content to enjoy the silence with him.

"Sakura." Somehow his voice almost makes it worse – hearing one of them saying her name as plainly as always, yet knowing there was affection for her in the simple word. Knowing that even without looking her way, he knew who it was standing there.

But he did look, and the slightest unnamed expression flickered over his face for a moment before bafflement replaced it. "Are you crying?" he asked incredulously, his unmasked eye wide in what would ordinarily be an almost comical slant of shock.

Gritting her teeth, the pink haired woman in question wiped at her face with her sleeves. "No!" she retorted hotly, but when Kakashi's expression flattened, she felt yet another traitorous tear leak down her face. "Damnit," she mutters, scrubbing her face one last time before moving forward and jumping to catch a low branch with one hand, flipping herself upward onto a branch adjacent to his own.

He doesn't ask her what's wrong, instead waiting for her to get to it on her own time. She never expected him to ask, and after taking a deep breath, she starts to explain.

"I tried to tell Ino, and she took it the wrong way. She thought I loved him like… like that. So I tried to explain it to Tsunade, and she scolded me and told me jealousy was ugly and didn't suit me."

Sakura let out an angry squealish scream of sorts, punching the branch she was sitting on; only Kakashi dragging her up by the arm to sit in front of him spared her the trouble of saving herself from falling to the ground as the branch gave way in crumbling bits of wood. As upset as she currently was, Kakashi was sure that frustration - and maybe hurt, if the glint in her eyes spoke right - was overriding common sense.

She avoids his gaze, averting her own, and the Copy Nin notes the redness around her eyes and dutifully pretends not to see it, knowing that it's the reason for her lack of eye contact.

"I'm sure they misunderstood," he spoke easily, attempting to be reassuring. But then she met his gaze, her green watery eyes glaring daggers at him that almost made him want to take back the words.

"You don't even know what I told them yet!" she yells, and he reaches forward to put a calming hand on her wrist before she punches _this _branch out from under them both – or better yet, the entire tree – and she resigns herself to making a tight fist.

She grumbles something that might have resembled an apology, and he watches some of the tautness leave her body as she lets out a sigh.

"I'm not jealous. And we all know I love him, but not in that way." Kakashi isn't entirely sure who she's referring to yet – though there are very few 'him's that she could possibly be talking about in conjunction with 'love', and he hopes that maybe one of them is, in at least some minute way, him, though not in this conversation.

"I became a medic-nin because I wanted to help – because I wanted to do something more for the team. And Naruto has _always_ asked for me when he's injured and needs a medic to heal him. He used to be so fussy about requesting me that any other nurse would just give up and fetch me."

Naruto is definitely one of the few men Kakashi knows Sakura loves, and that's part of the maturity that has grown in her over the years as he's watched – the ability to discard those teenager years where hatred, blame and manipulation were overwhelming urges, where insecurity brewed those feelings and reactions. Sakura might have replaced those ugly emotions with a deadly temper and brute strength to go with it, but as her maturity had developed, so had her ability to love and accept those around her.

"He came in, today, you know. I expected to be handed his chart right away, to be called in first thing. Instead I ran all the way there, only to find Hinata was already finishing the process of healing him." She took a deep breath, one that was far too shaky and unnerving for Kakashi, who couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the pink haired kunoichi near anything resembling tears.

"Naruto doesn't ask for me any more – he asks for her. I know she loves him, and I know at the very least he likes her… but I thought I was... I don't know, maybe his best friend – a best friend."

Kakashi understands, then, why Ino and Tsunade had brushed off a topic that was so intensely important to Sakura. It would have been easy to label what she was saying as whining or jealousy, but he knew better than either of the women that what Sakura was saying came from the heart and ran deeper than those fickle emotions.

"After all, he's one of my boys. I _always _heal you guys when you come back from missions!" Her voice had a possessive growl to it that made him smile, grateful that it was hidden behind his mask.

"But now… it's like I've been replaced." Unspoken there were very important underlying words, ones that Tsunade and Ino obviously had missed – not that 'she' had been replaced, but that the important things – the only things, in Sakura's eyes – that she could do to help were no longer deemed important to a loved one – worse, one of the loved ones whom she had dedicated her hard work to over the years.

Another frustrated scream, but thankfully, no punching.

"I'm happy for them! I am! It's just… I feel like the only thing I can do for Naruto doesn't mean anything to him any more. I know it sounds stupid, and it obviously didn't make any sense to _them_…"

Kakashi realizes, in that instant, what a high opinion Sakura must have of him to give him that chance to listen to what she was saying – that meant the inevitable chance that he could discard what she was saying, and reaffirm Ino and Tsunade's comments of jealousy. He was glad, then, that somehow he had managed an understanding of her over the past few years, because he knows that had he brushed her off as her best friend and mentor had, he surely would have added the last crack to a forming break in her heart.

_My boys_ – her reference to her team. Even Sai, now, was healed on an almost permanent basis by Sakura. All of them preferred the touch and comfort of someone most familiar to them – although it would seem that at the moment, Naruto was a bit too busy soaking up well-deserved infatuation to realize that he was distressing his teammate.

"Sorry," she apologizes, and in that moment, Kakashi looks at her and sees an utterly exhausted young woman. "I didn't mean to ruin your peace and quiet."

She makes to get up, then, but his gloved hand once again reaches out to touch her leg with the gentlest gesture. But she notices, as any shinobi would, and after a questioning glance in his direction, settles back down onto the branch.

Kakashi stares back off into space, and Sakura, somehow feeling as if a great burden had been lifted off of her shoulders, curls her legs towards her and gazes up at the setting sun, a small smile curling on her lips.

She doesn't ask what he thinks about what she said, because she knows, wordlessly, that he understands. She knows that he's wiser than the porn-reading-dolt some people take him to be – after all, he's the one who taught them to see underneath the underneath.

Kakashi knows she's truly had a rough day when Sai's presence remains undetected to her still as he exits the forest – likely having seen her tears and having followed her at a distance to reassure himself of her welfare. But Kakashi knew Sai had heard their conversation, and obviously the stoic man had been content with Sakura's condition.

Two days later, when Sakura is thrust into a hospital room where Kakashi and Sai both stare up at her with completely different faces, both of which managed to appear impish in their own ways - both attempting to look completely innocent of any wrongdoing - she doesn't connect it to the conversation with Kakashi earlier in the week.

She only thinks of mending the broken bones and bruises, scolding them in a rough voice, telling them they're idiots for sparring so heavily against each other that it looks like they've just returned from an A-class mission, but they all know the nagging is born from her affection for them, and that despite the worry they cause her, it's repaid in full by the satisfaction she receives from being able to simply help them.

So she misses the glances and crooked smiles that the two men shoot each other over her head while she's bent down tending to their injuries. Sparring against one another until they had beaten each other into a near pulp may have been exhausting, and if she had known why they did it, she would have likely beaten them senseless herself all over again.

But simply seeing her smile over the fact that two of her boys had stubbornly requested her for healing - her, Sakura the medic-nin, Sakura their teammate - her and nobody else, even though they had other friends who had become medic nins - that was worth it all to them.


End file.
